Four dead in Italian cave

[Lemna]

If you go in any overhead environment, it is your responsibility to place properly a guideline.

If there is a guideline, it is your responsibility to ensure it has been placed properly and safely, or you place your own.

If you do not know how to do it properly, or you have never done it, do a course and learn how to do it.

Lesson to be learnt: get cave training before you enter the overhead environment and be independent and self-sufficient.

Unfortunately, you might not know better if your training doesn't teach you to do that... The guide in the tv show, who is not using a line, is a cave instructor and member of the national committee for cave diving.

 

[gianaameri]

Unfortunately, you might not know better if your training doesn't teach you to do that... The guide in the tv show, who is not using a line, is a cave instructor and member of the national committee for cave diving.

Nothing surprises me about Italy, being Italian, but this one I really have a hard time to believe.

Sad about my country, if it is true.

He/anyone is free to dive how he/anyone likes, but to promote at the national level the practice of entering in an overhead environmet without a guideline would be unbelievable.

It can't be true.

 

[boulderjohn]

It is actually very easy.

If you go in any overhead environment, it is your responsibility to place properly a guideline.

Any overhead environment?

That may be easy to say, but it is very unrealistic.

The hotel where I stay in Cozumel has a nice snorkeling area in front of it, and there is an arch that is less than a body length wide at a depth of 8-9 feet that snorkelers like to swim through. It is an overhead environment. Should they be laying line while they do so?

That island has many, many very popular swim throughs of varying lengths. Some are little more than a body length long. Others are longer. Should all the divers who scoot through them on a daily basis be laying line?

I was in a dive in Puget Sound two years ago, and my dive buddy went through a submerged length of sewer pipe about 6 feet long. She is cave certified. Should she have laid line?

South Florida has many wrecks that were intentionally sunk to create an artificial reef. Many are small boats with big holes cut in the side to make sure there is no way anyone could get lost in them, but they are still overhead environments. Should all the divers who swim through them on a daily basis be laying line?

I know of some cases in the deeper and more complex wrecks (but still extremely easy to get in and out of), the people who dive them are angry about whoever it was that put line in them, because they see the line as an unnecessary entanglement hazard. (I suspect that the ones I am talking about have been removed by now.)

So when you say "any overhead environment," you are demanding a practice that is simply not going to happen. There are overhead environments in which no one is ever going to lay line because it would be downright silly to do so. On the other hand, there are overhead environments for which everyone would agree that line is essential. Where is the dividing line between the two? That is the part that is hard to define.

 

[gianaameri]

By all means, people should do what they like.

However, they should bear in mind that when they are not competent at something, they cannot properly assess the risks.

In an overhead environment if you rely on somebody else to assess the risk for you or to get you back home, it sometimes ends in tragedy.

Basically, if you are not ready, don't do it.

 

[boulderjohn]

I guess I am just not understanding what you are saying. To me, when you say this:

By all means, people should do what they like.

It contradicts what you say when you say this:

It is actually very easy.

If you go in any overhead environment, it is your responsibility to place properly a guideline.

When you say this:

However, they should bear in mind that when they are not competent at something, they cannot properly assess the risks.

In an overhead environment if you rely on somebody else to assess the risk for you or to get you back home, it sometimes ends in tragedy.

Basically, if you are not ready, don't do it.

You are outline the problem. Some overhead environments are so easy anyone can do it safely with any equipment, even on snorkel. Other overhead environments demand special training and equipment. It is the gray area in between that we have trouble with. How do you know if you are ready for it if you have never been in it? If you have a guide who tells you it is OK for you at your skill level, how will you know if that is true or not?

 

[TSandM]

I think Rick Murchison has defined it pretty well in the past. If you can't see your exit from your entrance, then clearly you can reach a place where you can't see your entrance from where you ARE, and therefore you need a line and the training to run and follow one. That is a necessary condition, but may not be sufficient, because I would guess there are places where you can SEE your exit from your entrance, until you ruin the viz, and then you can't see anything and wish you hadn't been so optimistic.

 

[gianaameri]

I guess I am just not understanding what you are saying. To me, when you say this:
It contradicts what you say when you say this:



When you say this:


You are outline the problem. Some overhead environments are so easy anyone can do it safely with any equipment, even on snorkel. Other overhead environments demand special training and equipment. It is the gray area in between that we have trouble with. How do you know if you are ready for it if you have never been in it? If you have a guide who tells you it is OK for you at your skill level, how will you know if that is true or not?

I leave no gray area when I say: "If you go in any overhead environment, it is your responsibility to place properly a guideline."

It is not an "Order" and leaves ample room for personal choice and judgement.

You think you are entering an "easy cave," and do not put the line, your problem.

Without proper cave training I do not think you can make a proper judgement though, but you can still decide not to place a guideline.

 

[JamesJoseph]

That was really horrible tragedy. We should learn something from this incident ...

 

[gianaameri]

It is a horrible tragedy, but also a repeat of many other horrible tragedies which happened many many times before because of the same dynamics or contributing factors.

The lessons to be learned were very thoroughly published long ago by Sheck Exley in his book.

See below a brief summary (but best buy the book by Sheck "Basic Cave Diving - A Blueprint for Survival").

What is yet to be learned is why divers keep on making the same mistakes again and again and again, and many die, and no matter how many die the same way and for how many years this happens, and how many times divers are told to use a guideline and to get trained before entering an overhead environment... same mistakes, more fatalities.

Why do divers after so many years/fatalities/discussions/warnings... still go in caves with no guideline, no training, no redundancy, no independent/self-reliant divers...?

That is the real mistery!

 

[boulderjohn]

I wonder if it would be possible to create a grading scale, such as is used to rate the difficulty of ascents in rock climbing.